Research Relevance Quotes

Scientists must venture outside their comfort zones to show the public how cool - and how important - their work really is.

Simply writing a Ph.D. or academic book was unlikely to play much of a role in helping shape people's lives as I wanted.

Every paper published in a respectable journal should have a preface by the author stating why he is publishing the article, and what value he sees in it. I have no hope that this practice will ever be adopted.

Scientific discoveries matter much more when they're communicated simply and well - if you can't explain your work to the man in the pub, what's the point?

For example, there are numbers of chemists who occupy themselves exclusively with the study of dyestuffs. They discover facts that are useful to scientific chemistry; but they do not rank as genuine scientific men. The genuine scientific chemist cares just as much to learn about erbium-the extreme rarity of which renders it commercially unimportant-as he does about iron. He is more eager to learn about erbium if the knowledge of it would do more to complete his conception of the Periodic Law, which expresses the mutual relations of the elements.

Research can be interesting, but it can be pointless as well. The realities of making a movie often are not conducive with that. I'm not knocking it. I love doing research myself, but I admit it doesn't always add to the performance.

It is understandable that people want to know how it affects them. But as a scientist, I would hope society would be equally interested in fundamental science.

I don’t know anyone in government who would read the academic journals that policy school professors get rewarded for publishing in.

My area of research is something that in all fairness has no practical usability whatsoever and the thing is I'm often asked to apologize for that. It is interesting to me that people ask 'what's the point of doing that if it's not useful?' But they never ask that, or do they very rarely ask that about art or literature or music. Those things are not gonna produce a better toaster.

Of course, relative citation frequencies are no measure of relative importance. Who has not aspired to write a paper so fundamental that very soon it is known to everyone and cited by no one?

The more important reason is that the research itself provides an important long-run perspective on the issues that we face on a day-to-day basis.

As Latinos, we are so aware of what people go through in order to come to America. It's very interesting to do research on something that's been culturally a part of your existence.

The general public doesn't know and probably doesn't care about punctuated equilibria nor indeed should they, or the greenhouse effect on some other planet - they barely have the ability to cope with the greenhouse effect on their own planet. So I think you have to distinguish between the broad visibility of a scientist when he or she is speaking to a general public and trying to address general issues and the continued position that a scientist may have into the history of a particular subject.